Impossible Choice: Heating Or Eating

September 19, 1992

In a three-year study, doctors at Boston City Hospital noticed a jump in the number of underweight children brought to emergency rooms just after cold spells. The doctors surmised that the children's parents were faced with a choice nobody should have to make, whether to pay for heat or food.

The terrible heat-or-eat dilemma may worsen throughout the Northeast this winter if the weather turns as cold as predicted and if Congress stays as stingy with fuel assistance as it was last year.

The House has voted to cut fuel assistance 40 percent, to $891 million. The Senate has proposed a 10 percent cut. A joint committee will work out a compromise in the next few weeks. A cut looks certain; the only question is how large.

This inevitable cut will come on the heels of a 35 percent drop in federal fuel assistance to Connecticut last winter. To compensate, the state slashed benefits and made ineligible for assistance some 15,000 people in subsidized housing whose heat was included in the rent. Over the winter and through the spring, the private, nonprofit agency Operation Fuel saw record demand from the working poor, the newly unemployed, the elderly poor who didn't realize fuel benefits had been cut until they received shutoff notices in April, and families who exhausted their state fuel benefits.

Meteorologists are predicting a cold winter. The state's fuel-aid surplus could vanish if the mercury drops. Many more people could face the awful decision of whether to heat or eat. This is no time for Congress to decimate fuel assistance